Review Cap18 Brown HD

BROWN, Douglas. Teaching Reading. In: Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to

language pedagogy. Michigan: Longman, 2001.^[1]

Michel Marques Correia^[2]

H. Douglas Brown received his M.A. in Linguistics and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously, he was Professor of English as a Second Language and Linguistics at the University of Illinois in Champaign- Urbana, where he also served as director of the division of ESL. Before that, he was on the faculty of Department of Linguistics and English Language Institute (ELI) at the University of Michigan; he was Acting Director of the ELI for three years. Professor Brown was the 1980-81 President of International TESOL.

Chapter 18 of Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, entitled "TEACHING READING" begins by providing tips that will lead the reader to keep in mind while reading the chapter that an integrated approach of interrelated skills in which reading is associated with writing, listening and speaking activities provides better development of the skill of reading.

In Research on Reading a Second Language, a historical overview of the development of top-down and bottom-up reading techniques is presented, starting the topic by bringing the implications made in the construction of the methodologies, bringing points that lead the reader to understand the factors that led to the adoption of these approaches in foreign language teaching.

Then, the author explains the research on the construction of meaning, showing how the research led to the understanding of the aspects of context perception based on external elements correlated to the theme addressed in the text, resulting in the implementation of the Schema Theory and Background knowledge methodologies. The way he presents examples to elucidate the exercise of the methods presented applied to teaching provides the reader with an optimal understanding of the theme.

In the next point, he addresses the role of affection and culture for the improvement of the habit of reading, showing that the reading of materials that evoke emotional interest and cultural connection has been successful in acquiring skills for the learners of a second language. In this way, he enters into a global view of the researches that aimed to determine the effectiveness of extensive reading for the foreign language learners.

In Adult literacy training, the author presents the application of bottom up and top down techniques in adult literacy training, highlighting some specific points that make these techniques excellent alternatives for this particular field of teaching. He ends the first topic with a list of topics that present issues and techniques to improve the different reading skills.

In the second topic of the chapter, “TYPES OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE”, the author presents us with genres and intrinsic elements of written language, delimiting their fields of use in the development of reading techniques. Then he brings the characteristics of written language, which relates directly to the previous topic and allows the reader to have interesting insights and understand mechanisms that facilitate interpretation processes.

This topic provides a good foundation for the following one, which presents several reading comprehension strategies that are of great relevance and encompass a multitude of ways to understand textual information by adopting specific perspectives, this topic makes the reader see the wide range of resources available to enhance the reading teaching experience.

In Types of Classroom Reading Performance, the author demonstrates the application of different forms of reading, the techniques that best assist in their practice, which specific objectives best fit with each form of reading as well as demonstrating their disadvantages, allowing the reader to mentally simulate the application in practice, providing a better diagnosis of activities based on the profile of learners and the purpose of reading.

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